I've just bought a new Mac mini and installed Libre Office. I understand that Java is not necessary for most of the tasks I am likely to use Office for, and I do not want to install it because of the security risks. However, I can find no way of permanently getting rid of the box which keeps popping up saying “To open 'java', you need to install a Java SE 6 runtime. Would you like to check for and install one?”

I've googled and not found any solution to this, other than the not very helpful suggestion to go ahead and install Java. Has anyone here found a way of disabling this annoying message? I've put this in the "Other OS" forum but I imagine it is relevant to Linux and Windows versions of Libre Office as well.

You don't say which version of Libre Office, but I'm assuming you've done the really obvious thing of going into LibreOffice>Preferences>LibreOffice>Java and unchecked the box for Use a Java runtime environment. As I'm on Snow Leopard (with a JRE) with LO 3.6.5.2 that's the only relevant option I can see.

Well Marrea, I can't find anything promising in the Library sections of OSX which have all the application preferences, but I notice that most posts seem to suggest that Java is only really needed for Base to work.
On my own system there is an entry under LibreOffice>Preferences>LibreOffice Base>Databases for a bibliography (not something I put there, it's there by default), perhaps if there are no databases registered it might not prompt you for Java?
LO used to need Java for help to work as well. I don't know if that's still the case in LO4.x, but you could try disabling the help agent as well.

Edit: or just dump it in favour of NeoOffice, as they say they've replaced Java with Cocoa code.

Rhakios wrote:On my own system there is an entry under LibreOffice>Preferences>LibreOffice Base>Databases for a bibliography (not something I put there, it's there by default), perhaps if there are no databases registered it might not prompt you for Java?

I see that I too have a similar entry, so I tried moving the file somewhere else temporarily - but I still got the error message.

Rhakios wrote:LO used to need Java for help to work as well. I don't know if that's still the case in LO4.x, but you could try disabling the help agent as well.

Tried that as well - still makes no difference.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I may well have a go at NeoOffice and see what it's like. I do a great deal of word processing and a fair amount of spreadsheeting, whether that be in Windows, Linux or Mac, so I need some sort of office suite on my Mac mini.